A MAN who blinded a fellow student in one eye after hitting him with a pool cue had ‘reached breaking point’.

Adam Winter, of Lime Walk, Headington, has already admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm but denies one count of GBH with intent following the attack on June 18, 2016.

When his trial opened at Oxford Crown Court on Monday, prosecutor Gavin Pottinger told the jury of eight women and four men that the victim, law student Zafran Sultan, had visited Ruskin College’s common room to work on an assignment when he was struck ‘out of the blue’ by Winter at around 1am.

In an interview with police read out in court yesterday, however, Winter said he had ‘lashed out’ and hit Mr Sultan after the latter made a slew of sexist comments to his friends before calling him a racist.

The 25-year-old, who reported the incident to police himself, told officers the attack had not been planned and he had only hit Mr Sultan with a pool cue because he was playing and it was in his hand at the time.

He admitted he had ‘massively overreacted’ and said he had aimed to strike the law student between his shoulder blades, not realising how badly Mr Sultan was hurt until he heard an ambulance was being called.

Winter said: “He had walked passed me. He must have turned into (the pool cue). I wanted to hit him just enough that he’d know it was time to go but not enough to cause serious injury.”

He added: “Everybody gets to a breaking point at some point.”

Estimating he had only been in the common room 20 minutes before the incident took place, he said he had become increasingly annoyed when he was told by friends that Mr Sultan had been making ‘inappropriate comments’ and had groped a friend’s girlfriend.

He said it seemed Mr Sultan was ‘looking for a confrontation’ but also said he regretted what happened and would apologise to Mr Sultan in person if he could.

Winter also talked about a building up of stress in his personal life, which included splitting up from his girlfriend of two years, being under pressure due to exams (on top of working 40 hours a week to pay for his studies) and separation from his family.

He told police: “All these things have just come to a head in one violent act.”

Taking to the witness box on Monday, Mr Sultan, who has lost the use of his left eye as a result of the attack, said: “I thought I was going to die.I fell and I could not get up, I was trying to get up but my body would not move.

“I was hit really hard. I didn’t know what had happened. I just fell and I was thinking ‘what is going on?”

During cross-examination, Emma Scott, defending, claimed that he had been drunk that night, which he denied.

Defence and prosecution barristers made closing arguments yesterday and the jury will now deliberate before reaching a verdict.